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Monday, November 5, 2012

ZendCon 2012 & Product Announcements

A funny thing happened on my way to ZendCon, Summit and LUG!

So I figure a recap of the activities from ZendCon 2012 is in order as there was a lot of information shared especially about new product.

Zend Server 6

Zend Server 6 was announced to a very enthusiastic crowd. Some cool new features that were demonstrated include the ability to organize access to Zend Server by role, leverage LDAP authentication and generate statistics on application and web site usage. The new UI was re-written in a lightweight JavaScript framework which makes it perform extremely well. Add to that that the architecture that is API driven and now third party vendors will be able to plug into it! The beta does not include IBM i but i do have an alpha copy loaded on one of my LPARs so it will be along soon. Here is a video with more info.

Zend Studio

So Studio has some enhancements, as well. The most prominent piece is the new Wizard that help a customer build an end-to-end mobile application in minutes. Leveraging the open source PhoneGap library, you can literally build test and deploy in a project in Zend studio to any of the three major handhelds in their specific technologies: iPhone(i/OS), Android and Windows Mobile. Zend Framework 2 integration has been enhanced along with greater PHP 5.4 support. Check out the beta here and provide feedback in the Studio 10 forum!

Other happenings

BCD, IBM and Zend hosted a really happening reception where all the IBM i folks gathered on Tuesday evening. Originally envisioned as a small dinner where the IBM i faithful could gather to network and share ideas (ala CUDS) this reception has evolved into a full blown party with about 45 people joining us from all parts of the community. Folks had a chance to mingle with the authors of the toolkit, IBM’ers Ryan and Tony, one of the current developers of the BCD tools and many Zenders stopped by on their way to and from various events. I think this was easily one of the most successful IBM i networking receptions we ever had and a special thanks to the marketing folks at IBM (Elaine and Andrea) for putting up with my badgering and allowing it to happen. Also, a HUGE thank you for BCD who did a great job participating and sponsoring. BCD is a great new partner and longtime friend of PHP on IBM i.

And then there was the LUG

I had the privilege of addressing the IBM Large User Group in Rochester Minnesota the same week as ZendCon. The crowd was excited as always about the solutions being delivered by Zend and the general direction of PHP. But what was really telling was the interest in mobile solutions and how important mobile has become to this community. more and more IBM i customers are continuing to adopt PHP and it is always great to chat with these folks all over the world! Here's to a great 2013 where the road work will be even greater!!!

2 comments:

Do you have information on any benchmarks between using Java on the iseries and using php. I would think that PHP is faster and better but I have heard that php has more limitations than java...someone mentioned parms ...can you direct me to more information?

Honestly, if I gave you statistics on PHP performance on IBM i vs. Java would you believe me? Even if I was ultimately objective, I would probably lean toward PHP cases and stats. Each performance benchmark needs to be evaluated against goals like time to first page, most users, most concurrent users, dynamics of content, etc. The real power of PHP over Java is how quickly you can get to the web with minimal overhead. There will always be advantages of one technology over the other. I'll offer two points, one that is pro PHP and the other that slants toward Java. One advantgae of PHP is that the PHP stack is very lightweight compared to a WebSphere or even a Tomcat. This is attractive to companies who are anticipating low usage or intermittant usage or slow adoption. PHP tends to scale the resources as you need them. WebSphere tends to build a world and hope they will come. Even when PHP scales it still tends to be lightweight. But many factors can play into the performance like caching, memory management, etc.

Then there is the development dilemma. If I learn Java I can use it both on the host and on the client, or mobile as in the case of Android. PHP only runs on the server. As an IBM i and mainframe guy before that, I love that model. but folks who want true client applications might demand something like Java so they only need to learn the language once.

If I can scare up some benchmarks I'll share. But I have not seen much in a while.